He made a good fight of it, and … beat the Trinity man a little on the book-work.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 96.
The men are continually writing out book-work, either at home or in their tutor's rooms.—Ibid., p. 149.
BOOT-FOX. This name was at a former period given, in the German universities, to a fox, or a student in his first half-year, from the fact of his being required to black the boots of his more advanced comrades.
BOOTLICK. To fawn upon; to court favor.
Scorns the acquaintance of those he deems beneath him; refuses to bootlick men for their votes.—The Parthenon, Union Coll., Vol. I. p. 6.
The "Wooden Spoon" exhibition passed off without any such hubbub, except where the pieces were of such a character as to offend the delicacy and modesty of some of those crouching, fawning, bootlicking hypocrites.—The Gallinipper, Dec. 1849.
BOOTLICKER. A student who seeks or gains favor from a teacher by flattery or officious civilities; one who curries favor. A correspondent from Union College writes: "As you watch the students more closely, you will perhaps find some of them particularly officious towards your teacher, and very apt to linger after recitation to get a clearer knowledge of some passage. They are Bootlicks, and that is known as Bootlicking; a reproach, I am sorry to say, too indiscriminately applied." At Yale, and other colleges, a tutor or any other officer who informs against the students, or acts as a spy upon their conduct, is also called a bootlick.
Three or four bootlickers rise.—Yale Banger, Oct. 1848.
The rites of Wooden Spoons we next recite,
When bootlick hypocrites upraised their might.
Ibid., Nov. 1849.
Then he arose, and offered himself as a "bootlick" to the
Faculty.—Yale Battery, Feb. 14, 1850.